Research leaders

Our research

We run a multi-disciplinary, translational research programme. This brings together wide-range of expertise, from basic biological studies to international clinical trials

Our work focuses on two of the major high-risk brain tumour types of childhood.

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant paediatric brain tumour. Atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumour (ATRT) is a commonly lethal tumour type. It arises most often in the first year of life.

Together, these diseases account for over 300 deaths in childhood every year in Europe.

Our principal approach to both tumours to understand their critical molecular features in detail. We using advanced next-generation genome-wide genetic and epigenetic technologies.

We use collections of primary and relapsed tumours linked to national and international clinical trials. We also use functional genomic models. We create these models to further understand their role in disease biology.

We use translational strategies to develop biomarkers. These can be used to personalise therapy through better diagnosis, classification and prediction of disease course.

We apply this understanding to develop novel therapies targeted against specific disease biology.

Our research programme is underpinned by expertise and capabilities in bioinformatics and genomics.

Our team of bioinformaticians is dedicated to childhood brain tumour research.

We have the high-performance computing resources and infrastructure necessary to perform high-throughput genomics.

We collaborate with INSTINCT partners. We make available our scripts and code and build open-source machine-learning classifiers implemented as web apps. This supports the molecular diagnostic and translational research community.